For The Pastry:
250g flour
175g butter
20g caster sugar
1 egg
half tablespoon cold water.
Rub the butter into the flour and stir in the sugar, or blitz in a food processor. Add the egg and water combining it all into a soft dough. Chill in a fridge for 40 mins.
Butter and flour a 25cm loose-based flan tin. Roll out the pastry to more than fit the tin – you don’t want to have to stretch the pastry. Hint: rolling it out between two sheets of greaseproof paper makes a tricky job slightly easier and cleaner! Chill the unbaked pastry case for another 20 minutes.
For the Filling:
500g blueberries, washed and dried.
2 eggs
125g caster sugar + extra for dusting
175ml cream
25g flour
1 desertspoonful of creme de cassis
Put the berries into the pastry case. Mix together the eggs, sugar, cream. flour and cassis well and pour over the fruit. Sprinkle over a little more caster sugar and bake at 200 degrees c/gas mark 6 for about 35 minutes. This is best served chilled.
Once I’ve picked all the berries, I cut out one or two of the oldest branches then give them a good top dressing of home made compost. Blueberries also put on a brilliant show of fiery autumn colours. Then next year their pretty white flowers are a magnet for our bees. All we have to do is keep them constantly moist and the blueberries do the rest. Taken all round, they’re really good value plants.
Mmmm, sounds absolutely delicious. I really do need to go move out into the country so I can experience this first hand instead of longingly reading it on a computer screen. And I am so making that pastry. Thank you for the recipe, Christina!
You're welcome, Marlena! The good thing about blueberries is that you can grow them in containers as long as you keep them moist with rainwater all the time. They're easier to net against pests, too then – allegedly!